1 2 7 The Sands of Dee 3 4 Estuarine excursions in liminal space 5 6 Les Roberts 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Come friendly bombs . . . 14 (John Betjeman) 15 16 17 Decoys, oblivion, modern nature 18 19 During the Second World War the port city of on the Mersey Estuary 20 was the target of frequent bombing raids by the Luftwaffe. The city’s strategic 21 importance meant that Liverpool and nearby locations such as and Birk- 22 enhead suffered some of the heaviest bombing in the UK, second only to London 23 in the scale of its devastation and human toll. As part of military efforts to miti- 24 gate the impact of the bombing, decoys were established on and around the 25 , including several at locations on the . The most 26 northerly of these was situated on Hilbre, one of the three rocky islands at the 27 mouth of the estuary. Others included decoy, designed to trick the Luft- 28 waffe pilots into thinking they were bombing the north docklands area of Liver- 29 pool, and, further south along the Wirral side of the estuary, Marsh 30 decoy, which was a decoy for Garston Docks in the south of Liverpool. During 31 the hours of darkness this flat expanse of marshland, stretching out towards the 32 mud flats and river on the far side of the estuary in North , wastrans- 33 formed into a littoral space of performance. Rigged up with poles, wires, electric 34 lights and bonfires the marshland terrain, with its tangle of gullies and ponds, 35 reflected the dance of illumination up into the night sky, creating the smoke and 36 mirrors illusion of a populous industrial landscape plunged into incendiary 37 chaos.1 38 If the aerial perspective framed an ostensibly cartographic space of illusion, 39 views of the marshland decoy obtainable at ground level were of a landscape 40 reconstructed (re-­staged) as mise-­en-scène. Indeed, in the absence of photo- 41 graphic evidence it is as a film set that this historical spectacle offers itself up to 42 the imagination: a space of artifice that could just as well have been presided 43 over by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (of whom more later) as by a 44 military strategist. The allusion to cinema in relation to the bomb decoys is ren- 45 dered all the more persuasive by the fact that these ‘fields of deception’ were

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 103 24/1/12 13:29:06 104 L. Roberts developed with the help of technicians from the film industry (Dobinson 1 2000: 25–8). Decoy sites such as Burton Marsh have attracted the interests of 2 military archaeologists, who, picking over any surviving structures and relics 3 help map a hitherto little known geography of Britain’s wartime heritage. Yet it 4 is precisely the performative attributes of these landscapes – their material and 5 symbolic architectures of oblivion and memory; the heterotopic invocation of 6 other worlds: other spaces and times – that makes them so compelling. In this 7 regard the decoy may be looked upon as a metonym for the Dee Estuary more 8 generally. Accordingly, it is as a space of performance – a liminal zone of myth, 9 ritual and practice – that I have set out to navigate this landscape (textually, his- 10 torically and geographically); selected tracings of which form the basis of this 11 chapter. 12 The example of the Burton Marsh and other estuary bomb decoys is also 13 instructive insofar as it draws attention to another defining characteristic of the 14 estuarine landscape: its inherent marginality. Perched on the edge of the land, 15 away from populated urban areas and straddling built and natural environments 16 (and sea and land), the impact of bombing raids on the Dee Estuary (unlike the 17 Mersey Estuary) would, of course, have been comparatively minimal. More 18 pointedly, the example brings with it the observation that the capacity of a land- 19 scape to invite and accommodate oblivion – whether in terms of aerial bombard- 20 ment, military testing, landfill and waste management sites, or environmentally 21 high-­risk industries, such as nuclear and other power generating plants, for 22 example – represents one of the measures by which to gauge its status as liminal 23 in the terms elaborated here. The perceived or actual threat of danger, contagion 24 or what Mary Douglas (1966) described as ‘matter out of place’ powerfully 25 underscores the sense of an unstable and precarious landscape. Navigation or (in 26 an inversion of the transitory properties of liminal spaces) habitation carries with 27 it the elemental risk of injury or death. In the case of the Dee Estuary, this zonal 28 uncertainty is further reinforced by the instability of a hazardous ‘natural’ topo­ 29 graphy comprised of marshland and intertidal mud and sand flats. 30 Given that much of the estuarine landscape is the product of human inter- 31 vention on a grand scale (particularly that of Nathaniel Kinderley’s River Dee 32 Company – see below), the extent to which it can indeed be described as natural 33 is a moot point. As a partly reclaimed landscape, a product of industrial engin- 34 eering, it is more instructive to look upon the Dee Estuary (or at least those ele- 35 ments that are of concern here) as an exemplar of what artist and filmmaker 36 Derek Jarman (after Maggi Hambling) describes as ‘modern nature’ (1992: 8). 37 Jarman is referring to the quintessential liminal landscape that is Dungeness: a 38 huge shingle bank (the largest in Europe) on the south east coast of England 39 where Jarman lived until his death in 1994. Dominated by the brooding presence 40 of the nuclear power station, with large stretches of the beach and adjoining 41 marshland (marked ‘Danger Area’ on the map) used for military training, and a 42 vast canvas of sky bearing down on the land, topologically Dungeness bears 43 some resemblance to the sprawling estuarine landscapes of the Dee: the ‘empty’ 44 spaces in-between­ the coastlines of Wirral (in England) and (in North 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 104 24/1/12 13:29:06 The Sands of Dee 105 1 Wales). Take a walk around Burton Marsh today and, while it is unlikely that 2 you would be exposing yourself to the threat of aerial bombardment, you might 3 unwittingly find yourself dodging stray bullets from the nearby Ministry of 4 Defence Rifle Range at Sealand (a place that toponymically references its liminal 5 status). Trudge a circuitous path across the marsh in the direction of the river 6 and sooner or later you’ll discover the contingent geography that governs this 7 space: linearity has little or no application here; in this environment wayfinding 8 defines a temporality not a geography: routes (such as there are) are as tangible 9 as the footprints (and accompanying squelches) that dissolve into the marshland 10 almost as soon as the next one is made. Look south towards , 11 the vertical landmark that lays totemic claim to the region, and it is an 12 industrial landscape that dominates: Connah’s Quay Power Station on the south 13 side of the River Dee, and Deeside Power Station and Corus Steelworks to the 14 north. If you make it across the marsh to the main road that serves the industrial 15 zone you will find yourself gravitated towards the cable-­stayed crossing over the 16 Dee, only to find that this too is something of a non-­place as pedestrians are pro- 17 hibited to cross. 18 In short, this is a landscape that inhibits dwelling, lingering, or even naviga- 19 tion. If its transformative energies translate to, on the one hand, the abstract 20 mobilities of the river crossing (the bridge was described by one local resident as 21 a ‘road to nowhere’2), and, on the other, the threat (or allure) of danger, death 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Figure 7.1 ‘Wayfinding’: Burton Marsh looking south-west towards Connah’s Quay 44 Power Station, showing GPS tracks (in white) of walk by the author, Novem- 45 ber 2010.

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 105 24/1/12 13:29:06 106 L. Roberts and oblivion (the ‘off-­road’ excursions through marshland terrain), then to what 1 extent can we meaningfully describe the estuary as a liminal space? 2 Exploring more closely the social, cultural and historical geography of the 3 Dee Estuary we can see how structures of liminality have remained deeply 4 embedded in the topography of the region. First, it is a borderzone between 5 England and Wales, and politics of identity and territoriality have played a form- 6 ative role in shaping the landscape, as indeed have the many routes and connec- 7 tions that have defined and refined its relational geographies. Second, much of 8 the physical landscape may be described as liminal insofar as it is land reclaimed 9 from the river and marshland by canal engineers in the eighteenth century, some 10 parts of which are under threat of re-­reclamation by the Dee as the estuarine 11 ecology changes and the wetlands reassert their authority over the dry. A further 12 liminal characteristic of this landscape, one that interlaces the borderzone and 13 ‘sea-­land’ liminalities, is the interstitial zone that marks the limen or threshold 14 between the living and the dead. Oblivion, as Marc Augé reminds us, is the 15 negation of memory: ‘[r]emembering or forgetting is doing gardener’s work, 16 selecting, pruning’ (2004: 17). In order to remember it is necessary at the same 17 time to forget. Liminal rites of transition – and by extension the spaces in which 18 they are practised – provide the possibilities of a strategic amnesia by which, 19 paradoxically, an archaeology of deep memory may be performed. Cultivating a 20 (spatial) dialogue between the living and the dead – between the estuarine way- 21 farers of the past and those of the present – the place or topos of the liminal is 22 explored here through topoanalytic (Bachelard 1994) reflection on the act and 23 trope of drowning. 24 25 26 The Sands of Dee 27 O Mary, go and call the cattle home 28 And call the cattle home, 29 And call the cattle home 30 Across the sands of Dee 31 The western wind was wild and dank with foam, 32 And all alone went she. 33 (Charles Kingsley, ‘The Sands of Dee’, 1849) 34 35 Working on ideas for a music video for the Manchester band New Order, in 36 1988 the American film producer Michael Shamberg approached the legendary 37 British director Michael Powell – by then well into his eighties – to see if he 38 would be interested in directing the video. Powell expressed interest in the 39 project, and proposed the idea of a short film based around Charles Kingsley’s 40 poem ‘The Sands of Dee’. The poem tells the tragic tale of a cattle girl called 41 Mary who ventures out onto the sands of the estuary and is overtaken by the 42 tides and drowned, her body later found caught amongst the fishing nets. In 43 preparation for the film Powell and his wife, the film editor Thelma Schoon- 44 maker, went on a location scout to the Dee Estuary, but, due to delays in the 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 106 24/1/12 13:29:06 The Sands of Dee 107 1 ­production and Powell’s subsequent death, the film was never made. Powell’s 2 preference for casting the actress Tilda Swinton in the role of the cattle girl Mary 3 – he described the close up of Swinton dead in the salmon nets as being ‘box 4 office’3 – provides an indication that, had it been completed, the film would have 5 owed some debt to the work of one of British film’s heirs to Powell’s legacy, 6 Derek Jarman. Whether the brownfield sites and edgelands of the River Thames 7 in 1988’s The Last of England (in which Swinton performs an apocalyptic dance 8 against the burning backdrop of a city doomed by Thatcherism) or the vast 9 shingle expanse of Dungeness in The Garden (1990) – the setting for a con- 10 temporary retelling of the Passion – Jarman’s films often inhabit liminal land- 11 scapes in which the performative presence of Tilda Swinton is a recurrent 12 element. 13 In Blue, Jarman’s final feature released shortly before his death in 1994, the 14 metaphor of drowning – of dwelling for eternity in ‘submarine gardens’ – is 15 woven into a poetic meditation on the imminence (and immanence) of death, the 16 final breaching of the limen between presence and oblivion: Deep waters/ 17 Washing the isle of the dead/In coral harbours . . ./Across the still seabed/We lie 18 there/Fanned by the billowing/Sails of forgotten ships/Tossed by the mournful 19 winds/Of the deep. While Powell’s interest in Kingsley’s poem and the land- 20 scape that inspired it may have been similarly bound up with a growing sense of 21 mortality, it is more instructive to attribute it to the director’s long-standing­ fas- 22 cination with the Old Testament story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea.4 23 As a visual motif, the image of the sea as an epic, portentous force that at any 24 moment might engulf an otherwise insignificant humanity appears in several of 25 Powell and Pressburger’s films: in The Red Shoes, for example, the centrepiece 26 performance of ‘The Ballet of the Red Shoes’ is at one point flooded with crash- 27 ing waves (Conrad 1992); in I Know Where I’m Going ‘the epic drama of the 28 Corryvreckan whirlpool’ was inspired, as Ian Christie (2001) notes, by Cecil B. 29 DeMille’s 1923 portrayal of the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Command- 30 ments. But perhaps the most striking example can be found in The Elusive Pim- 31 pernel, made in 1950. Temporarily holed up in the abbey at the island of Mont 32 St Michel in Normandy, the Pimpernel/Sir Percy Blakeney (played by David 33 Niven) is planning his escape back across the Channel with his latest consign- 34 ment of aristocratic asylum seekers. Strategically deploying the forces of nature, 35 he tricks his arch nemesis Chauvelin (Cyril Cusack) and the advancing forces of 36 the French Republic by timing his escape just as the tide is coming in, cutting off 37 Mont St Michel from the mainland and engulfing the army as they attempt to 38 apprehend the Pimpernel before he makes his escape. 39 From a contemporary perspective, the association between asylum seekers 40 and metaphors of water and the sea is more likely to connote negative attitudes 41 surrounding immigration policy. The fear of being ‘swamped’ or ‘flooded’, rhet- 42 oric frequently deployed in right-­wing British newspapers such as the Daily Mail 43 and the Sun, draws on these metaphorical associations to present a view of the 44 nation as a bastion community struggling to maintain the sanctity of its borders 45 from forces beyond its immediate power to control. The strengthening of

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 107 24/1/12 13:29:06 108 L. Roberts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Figure 7.2 ‘Welcome to Poland’: the River Dee at on the England/Wales border. 23 24 national frontiers of identity (a logic which ‘goes against the tide’ of trans- 25 national mobility and increased global flows), as with environmental efforts to 26 prevent coastal erosion and the encroachment of the sea, becomes essentially a 27 reactive and defensive exercise, predicated on the management or containment 28 of ‘otherness’. It is not the spirit of the Pimpernel that pervades the liminal land- 29 scapes of millennial Britain, but a Canute-­like denial of the borderzone as a 30 porous space of flows and ‘radical openness’ (hooks 1990). 31 Viewed in the aftermath of the death of 23 Chinese migrant workers in More- 32 cambe Bay in February 2004, Powell and Pressburger’s magnificent set-­piece of 33 Mont St Michel mnemonically evokes a more tragic mise-­en-scène, where the 34 confluent themes of migrancy and drowning have soberingly literal connotations. 35 Located on the north west coast of England in Lancashire, Morecambe Bay is 36 notorious for its fast moving tides and treacherous quicksand, as well as its 37 lucrative cockle beds. Despite the dangers posed by this stretch of coastline the 38 Bay has long attracted itinerant workers, many of whom, as with the Chinese 39 cockle pickers, were (until the introduction of the 2004 Gangmasters Act5) at the 40 mercy of exploitative and illegal gangmasters. While the Morecambe Bay inci- 41 dent brought to light the appalling conditions faced by these migrant workers, it 42 also forced an awareness of the extent to which such groups are an invisible but 43 immutable presence, occupying a ghostly liminal zone on the social and geo- 44 graphic margins of the nation; caught in the interstices of transnational space. 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 108 24/1/12 13:29:06 The Sands of Dee 109 1 Prior to 2004 hundreds of cockle pickers were drawn to the sandbanks of the 2 Dee Estuary, which, like Morecambe Bay also boasts a thriving cockling indus- 3 try. Working in similarly hazardous conditions, the pickers now harvest the 4 banks in more sustainable numbers, although there are still tensions between 5 local cocklers and those from outside the area, and unlicensed cockling remains 6 rife. In an effort to control cockle picking in the estuary, the Environment 7 Agency use so-called­ ‘Cockle Cams’ to monitor cockling teams. Heat-sensor­ 8 searches by police helicopter have also been used to locate unlicensed pickers 9 working the cockle beds at night (Butler 2008; Wainwright 2010). 10 11 The western tide crept up along the sand, 12 And o’er and o’er the sand, 13 And round and round the sand, 14 As far as eye could see. 15 The rolling mist came down and hid the land: 16 And never home came she. 17 18 Had it been written today, Kingsley’s poem ‘The Sands of Dee’ might well have 19 recounted the tale of a cockle picker rather than a cattle girl. Either way, as a 20 lyrical reflection on a landscape in which poor and marginal groups have for 21 centuries eked out a precarious living, and through which individuals of all 22 classes once travelled along the many fords that snaked across the sands, the 23 poem sketches the outlines of a deep topography that has long been shaped by 24 the omnipresent threat of drowning. 25 26 Cestrian Book of the Dead 27 28 Straddling the England–Wales border near the Roman city of , the town of 29 Saltney takes its name from the former salt marshes that occupied the area prior to 30 the canalisation of the Dee in 1732 and subsequent reclamation of land either side 31 of the river. As with other areas of marshland in the estuary, Saltney Marshes were 32 renowned for being a dangerous landscape to attempt passage through, partly on 33 account of the wild and waterlogged terrain, but also because it provided refuge 34 for criminals and other undesirables to whom travellers ran the risk of falling 35 victim. Church Registers between 1585 and 1750 record many instances of deaths 36 by drowning or murder on Saltney Marsh (Anon. 1989: 2). Known by the Welsh 37 as ‘Morfa Caer Leon’, or ‘marsh of the fort of the legions’ (Owen 1994: 125), the 38 route westward into Wales from Roman Chester was barred by this wild expanse 39 of morfa, which Gee Williams in her short story of the same name describes as 40 ‘two thousand acres of legion-­defying swamp’ (2008: 186; Mason 1987: 153). It 41 was not until the reclamation of the marshland in the eighteenth century that safe 42 and direct passage westward through Saltney to the Welsh district of Broughton 43 became possible (on what is now the A5104 Chester Road). 44 Saltney today turns its back on the river. Even along River Lane – the former 45 industrial hub of the town – the canalised stretch of Dee to which Saltney owes

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 109 24/1/12 13:29:06 110 L. Roberts its existence tries its level best to conceal itself from view. De-­industrialisation 1 and modern transport communications have rendered it an industrial ruin: a 2 silted relic of modern nature. This is not to suggest that it is a forgotten or deso- 3 late landscape – dog walkers, cyclists and joggers move leisurely along the 4 embankments or linger for a moment atop the footbridge at Saltney Ferry 5 (named after the river crossing it replaced). Even death still has its place here. 6 But, as with the case of a local man found hanging from the bridge early one 7 morning in 2009, the river becomes a sacred and intimately private place of 8 death where final acts of ritual oblivion are silently observed. Although the river 9 has for centuries been a place where people have chosen to end their life – the 10 Dee Bridge in Chester was a particularly popular suicide spot (see below) – what 11 distinguishes the types of death that occur on or around the Dee today from those 12 of earlier times is the extent to which they are detached from the everyday and 13 mundane. Separation – whether from life, society, loved ones, habitat (and 14 habitus), environment, and so on – is the prerequisite for transition: the liminal 15 phase. The margins, edgelands and in-­between spaces of the river become, in 16 turn, its spatial correlate: the liminal zone where the living are ushered from this 17 world into the next. Whereas, before the estuarine landscape was drained and 18 tamed (and its inhabitants displaced from the newly reclaimed land), the liminal- 19 ity that defined this space was more firmly embedded in the social practices of 20 everyday life. By examining coroners’ records of deaths by drowning that 21 occurred at Chester and at various locations on the Dee Estuary we can get a 22 clear sense of a landscape that was geographically but by no means socially or 23 culturally marginal, and whose transitional properties were intrinsically bound 24 up with the ‘mesh-works’­ (Ingold 2007: 80) of mobility, wayfinding and every- 25 day habitus by which, as a social space, it was constituted. 26 Dating back to the early 1500s the Chester Quarter Sessions Coroners’ 27 Inquest records6 provide a fascinating insight into the ways different social actors 28 engaged with the Dee, whether in and around Chester or further out along the 29 estuary in ports such as Parkgate, at one time a major departure point for Ireland. 30 The records include details of the names and locations (where known) of over 31 300 deaths by drowning from Chester to the mouth of the river at . 32 For example: 33 34 • Ales Rutter, drowned while washing clothes at ‘the cage’, a common 35 washing place. June 11th 1630 36 • William Cowpack, fell into the Dee while gathering daisys and was 37 drowned. April 2nd 1775 38 • Boniventrus Hanky, drowned while bathing at ‘Le Posterne’. Aug. 6th 1586 39 • Edward Davenport, drowned when he rode his horse, while under the influ- 40 ence of drink, into the Dee at the bottom of Sandy Lane. Dec. 3rd 1700 41 • John Blundell drowned when he fell overboard in a drunken stupor from a 42 certain sloop near the Crane. Aug. 24th 1734 43 • Unknown girl, fell off cart with a drunken driver while crossing the ford to 44 and was drowned. May 4th 1730 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 110 24/1/12 13:29:07 The Sands of Dee 111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Figure 7.3 ‘Cestrian Book of the Dead’: GIS map of sites of death by drowning on the 23 Dee Estuary, 1524–1871. Topographic map made in 1732 by John Mackay. 24 25 As nearly half of the entries record the exact (or approximate) location of death 26 it is possible to geo-­reference the sites of drowning, and from this attempt to for- 27 mulate a clearer understanding of the social geography of the estuary’s pre-­ 28 reclamation landscapes. The Cestrian Book of the Dead – a digital 29 necrogeographic map of Dee drowning locations – traces the performative 30 spaces of the living (public laundry areas, recreation sites, fords, pathways, etc.) 31 by spatialising the patterns and clusters where drowning fatalities were recorded. 32 Most of the drownings occurred in three main locations: the Dee Bridge in 33 Chester, the port of Parkgate, and the to Flint ford. The Dee Bridge, 34 overlooking the weir and salmon leap, is where the medieval mills were sited 35 and where, at the nearby ‘cage’ (salmon cages), people congregated to wash 36 their clothes. The majority of deaths by suicide on the Dee are recorded here. 37 Records also show that attempts were made to cross the river via the weir, 38 which, as with the nearby ford, offered a toll-­free, but dangerous alternative to 39 the bridge. Downriver at Parkgate, many of those who drowned were mariners 40 falling overboard (often as a result of inebriation) when transferring to and from 41 ships moored at the port. By the early eighteenth century Parkgate had become 42 the main anchorage serving Chester, whose fortunes as a trading port had 43 declined due to silting which had made river navigation increasingly difficult. 44 From the sixteenth century ports had been established at successive locations 45 downriver at Shotwick, Burton, and Parkgate, but each in turn would

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 111 24/1/12 13:29:07 112 L. Roberts also fall into decline due to the build up of silt, a situation which would eventu- 1 ally contribute to the rise of Liverpool as a major port city. 2 Another notorious place of drowning was on and around the ford at Shotwick 3 which was part of an ancient salt traders’ route called ‘Saltesway’, an important 4 line of communication between , Cheshire and Lancashire. A 5 description of the ford is contained in the travel memoirs of Celia Fiennes who 6 passed through Cheshire in 1698: 7 8 I forded over the Dee when the tide was out, all upon the sands at least a 9 mile, which was as smooth as a die, being a few hours left of the flood. . . . 10 When the tide is fully out they frequently ford in many places which they 11 mark as the sands fall, and go near nine or ten miles over the sands from 12 Chester to Burton on to Flint town almost. 13 (quoted in Young 1926: 154) 14 15 As those travelling into Wales via the Dee Bridge in Chester would have faced a 16 long detour to avoid Saltney Marshes (as well as pay tolls to cross the bridge), 17 the fords downriver at Blacon and Shotwick were widely used, despite the haz- 18 ardous and constantly shifting sands, which claimed many lives (Thacker et al. 19 2005): 20 21 • Unknown man, drowned while attempting to cross the ford at Shotwick. May 22 26th 1681 23 • Arthur Carr, apprentice to John Lovett, merchant of Dublin, mistakenly 24 forded the Dee near Shotwick while riding to Parkgate to embark for 25 Ireland and was drowned trying to return. April 23rd 1698 26 • Anne Blackburn, widow, drowned while crossing the sands from Flint. June 27 24th 1718 28 • Thomas Pearson, labourer, drowned while attempting to ford the Dee from 29 the Welsh side. Aug. 18th 1725 30 • Alice, wife of Thomas Harrison, drowned while crossing Shotwick ford. Jan. 31 9th 1753 32 • Thomas Harrison, drowned while crossing Shotwick ford. Jan. 12th 1753 33 34 The latter two are consecutive entries on the page: husband and wife drown 35 crossing the ford in January 1753, three days apart. Did Thomas Harrison 36 already know that his wife Alice had died when he set out across the sands? Was 37 he attempting to complete the journey where she had failed? Perhaps he had 38 gone to look for her or retrieve her body? Or, possessed by grief, he had resolved 39 to join her in her watery grave? And where were they headed anyway? These 40 and other fragmentary tales of life and death on the Dee have no resolution other 41 than that of their documented fate. That much we know. Clipped narratives, they 42 haunt the palimpsestic spaces of the estuary and, in so doing, reinscribe their 43 presence on a landscape savaged by oblivion. As topographic features the fords 44 are as intangible as the memories they evoke. The route of Shotwick to Flint ford 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 112 24/1/12 13:29:07 The Sands of Dee 113 1 appears on John Boydell’s 1771 map of the estuary, but in actuality its location 2 would have changed over time, rendering it all but unmappable. Nonetheless, 3 provisionally at least Boydell’s ford remains a line that can be drawn in the 4 sands, whether as GIS polyline data overlaid on a present day map of the estuary, 5 or by attempting to navigate its deep topographies on foot. The latter strategy – a 6 psycho-­topographic mode of intervention ‘in the field’ – draws the layered geo­ 7 graphies of past and present into oblique confrontation. Through this process the 8 shapes, vectors and affective geometries of today’s estuary are brought into 9 relief, revealing a physical landscape that bears little resemblance to that through 10 which the wayfarers of the past once travelled. By the late eighteenth century, 11 the fords, along with Parkgate’s brief status as a port, had become early casual- 12 ties of modern nature. 13 14 Sealand empire: taming the land 15 16 Always shifting, the sands of Dee not only posed challenges for those navigating 17 the estuary on foot, horse or cart, they also impeded safe river navigation to Chester, 18 a problem that had been the bane of city officials since the fourteenth century 19 (Pritchard 2002: 168). In an ill-­fated attempt to address the problems of silting and 20 to reverse Chester’s decline, in the early 1700s the city authorities began to consider 21 the option of implementing a canalisation scheme, called the New Cut or Naviga- 22 tion Cut. The aim was to re-­route the river from its old course along the Wirral side 23 of the estuary through a deeper channel on the Welsh side so as to improve naviga- 24 tion along the estuary to Chester. One of the criteria that prospective engineers were 25 required to address when constructing the channel was to ensure the prevention of 26 future silting or at least reduce it to sustainable levels. In 1733 an Act of Parliament 27 ‘to recover and preserve the Navigation of the River’ was passed which granted 28 exclusive rights to Nathanial Kinderley and the newly formed River Dee Company 29 (ibid.). Completed in 1740, the New Cut runs for five miles through the former 30 Saltney Marshes to Connah’s Quay where it joins the estuary. 31 In what seems to have been a monumentally bad negotiation on the part of 32 the city authorities (Armour 1956: 109–10), Chester relinquished all rights to the 33 estuary and in exchange for undertaking and completing the canalisation scheme, 34 Kinderley received all the lands reclaimed by the drainage of the former 35 marshes, as well as the levying of tolls on shipping tonnage. Kinderley ignored 36 completely the requirements for the project to prevent silting. One of the con- 37 sequences of the reclamation of Saltney Marshes was the eviction of poorer 38 classes who used the area as common land and grazing land for cattle. The rich 39 soil of the reclaimed land was perfect for arable farming and was thus extremely 40 profitable to the River Dee Company. Meanwhile the river continued to silt up 41 and Chester’s fortunes continued to decline. Less than a century later in 1826 the 42 Chester Chronicle reported the minutes of a meeting of the River Dee Commis- 43 sioners in which it was acknowledged that ‘The Port of Chester is gone’, putting 44 the blame squarely on Kinderley and the River Dee Company (Herson 1996: 75; 45 see also Armour 1956: 78–110). As John Young, writing in 1926, concludes:

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 113 24/1/12 13:29:07 114 L. Roberts the indiscriminate reclaiming of land in the upper estuary [the area now 1 called Sealand] . . . did more, perhaps, than anything else to bring about the 2 great increase of silting . . . Dee Estuary simply stands out as one great 3 tragedy – one which might not have been so great had it not been for Man’s 4 selfish desire for immediate wealth, as illustrated by the policy of the River 5 Dee company. 6 (1926: 194, 4, emphasis added) 7 8 The sheer scale of the folly and impact of the canalisation scheme on the land- 9 scape and ecology of the estuary has been immense. Looking north westward 10 from Saltney Ferry footbridge the geometric precision of the New Cut leads the 11 eye towards a vanishing point that converges at Flintshire Bridge. Old and new, 12 horizontal and vertical, these abstract formations hold their sway over a land- 13 scape tamed. The rational uniformity of Kinderley’s navigation has ironed out 14 the contingent and uncertain; and with it much of the vitality, sociality and 15 history that had formerly defined this liminal zone. Boats are rarely seen on this 16 stretch of the Dee, with the exception of the ,7 the barge that 17 carries the wings from the nearby Broughton factory where they 18 are made to Docks further up the Flintshire coastline. 19 The marshland reclaimed either side of the New Cut is now largely characterised 20 by low-­lying farmland, retail parks and industrial sites. The settlements of Saltney, 21 Saltney Ferry (Mold Junction), Sealand, and are also located here. The 22 subtle legibility of the pre-­reclamation shoreline defines a zonal boundary which, 23 once read, can stir a dormant imaginary of place in which the river and wetlands 24 reassert their hold over the land. After periods of heavy rain the sight of water- 25 logged fields and drainage ditches ready to burst heightens this sense of a resurgent 26 historical landscape, as if the past and its ghosts are seeping up through the soil. 27 As a cultural landscape, the aesthetic virtues of the canalised Dee, unlike 28 some of its more picturesque locations upriver (in Cheshire or the Vale of Llang- 29 ollen, for example), are perhaps not so readily apparent. In his Dee travelogue, 30 River Map, for example, Jim Perrin writes, 31 32 the canalised cut . . . meanders across the dreariest of industrial landscapes to 33 this loss of identity. . . . Let’s skip a few miles and a period in time, because 34 I do not want to impose any more than is necessary of that desperate land- 35 scape upon you. 36 (Perrin 2001: 4) 37 38 Yet insofar as the story of the estuary is, as Young suggests, one of tragedy, it is 39 precisely this ellipsis in the river’s spatial story that casts the longest shadow. 40 Like the river, the mythopoesis of the Dee – the wellspring that Michael Powell 41 had sought to draw from – has silted over; narratives and their geographies have 42 been canalised, their spoil used to build embankments within which they are 43 safely contained. The spirit of Nathaniel Kinderley looms large over this 44 sealand-­scape. The barriers need breaching; the river reclaiming. 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 114 24/1/12 13:29:07 The Sands of Dee 115 1 Reclaiming the Dee 2 Flow back to your sources, sacred rivers, 3 And let the world’s great order be reversed. 4 (Euripedes, Medea) 5 6 7 In a historical analogue to The Elusive Pimpernel, sometime around 1800 an 8 émigré or asylum seeker from revolutionary France came to Chester from Nor- 9 mandy (perhaps passing through Mont St Michel). A relative of Quatremère De 10 Quincey, we do not know much about this individual other than that he was the 11 cause of mistaken identity, precipitating Thomas De Quincey’s journey to 12 Chester to return a letter which contained a banker’s draft for 40 guineas mistak- 13 enly sent to the writer. In his account of his time in Chester in Confessions of an 14 English Opium Eater, De Quincey describes a walk to an area of the city known 15 as the Cop which is an open space overlooking the River Dee. Already in a state 16 of some anxiety as a result of having to attend to the matter of his mistaken 17 inheritance, the writer is paralysed by ‘a sudden uproar of tumultuous sounds 18 rising clamorously ahead’ (1994: 80). He later realises it was the tidal bore 19 which in De Quincey’s day would have come in close to the city centre. Clearly 20 affected by the phenomena – ‘until that moment, I had never heard of such a 21 nervous affection in rivers’ (ibid.: 82) – De Quincey is moved to describe the 22 river as ‘hysterical’, invoking the above-cited­ lines from Euripedes’s play Medea 23 (ibid.: 80). 24 In this moment of hysteria, the psychic connection De Quincey makes with 25 the river strongly alludes to a state of inversion, transition and the suspension of 26 established rules and societal conventions: qualities that we can quite readily 27 characterise in terms of the liminal. Re-framed­ within the broader context of 28 this chapter, the Medea’s injunction calls upon the Dee to reassert its dormant 29 spirit of transition and flux. Retracing the footsteps of those who have trod 30 before us – be it De Quincey, Charles Kingsley, Celia Fiennes, or the marsh- 31 land wayfarers of the Book of the Dead – establishes a relationship of co-­ 32 presence (Ingold and Vergunst 2008: 7) by which a psycho-­topographic 33 remapping of the Dee becomes possible. As a liminal practice it is instructive to 34 think of this not so much in terms of the tripartite formulation of Arnold van 35 Gennep and Victor Turner (the three stages of the ritual process), but in the 36 more truncated terms which the artist Phil Smith (aka CrabMan) outlines in his 37 book Mythogeography. Reworking the Situationist concept of the dérive or 38 ‘drift’, CrabMan suggests: 39 40 If romantic walking . . . can be compared to the rites of passage defined by 41 anthropologist Victor Turner . . . then the dérive . . . lops off the last of the 42 three [stages] (re-­integration) and short-­circuits flux [the liminal phase] 43 straight back into separation. And keeps doing that until the practice can 44 stand no more repetition and throws off some new, mutant activity. 45 (Smith 2010: 118)

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 115 24/1/12 13:29:07 116 L. Roberts Reclaiming the Dee, the estuarine excursions I have set out in this chapter have 1 sought to map the confluence of past and present geographies of liminality. 2 These liminal landscapes are transitional in the sense of occupying a space 3 ‘betwixt and between’, but also, as performative spaces, their affective carto­ 4 graphies map the latent energies that reside at these confluence points, offering 5 the potential for transformation, but also for danger. The trope of drowning, 6 while connoting death, can also serve as a metaphor for the saturation of an 7 indurated land. To drown may be to go under, but it can also mean renewal. 8 9 10 Notes 11 1 www.airfieldinformationexchange.org/community/showthread.php?2989-Dee- ­ 12 Estuary-Burton-Marsh-decoy-­ for-Garston-­ Docks;­ www.airfieldinformationexchange.org/ 13 community/showthread.php?2988-Dee-­Estuary-Heswall-­Decoy-for-­Liverpool-northern-­ 14 dock-area; www.wikiwirral.co.uk/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/330639/Hilbre_Island_ 15 WW2_Bombing_Deco.html (all accessed 27 April 2011). 2 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/3847799.stm (accessed 28 April 2011). 16 3 Michael Shamburg, ‘The Sands of Dee’, www.kinoteca.net/Text/sands_dee.htm 17 (accessed 21 June 2010). 18 4 In Million Dollar Movie, the second volume of his autobiography, Powell recalls how 19 at chapel in school he often spent his time meditating ‘on my favourite miracle, the 20 parting of the Red Sea’ (quoted in Conrad 1992). 5 This legislation was introduced in response to the Morecambe Bay tragedy. The 21 purpose of the Act is ‘to make provision for the licensing of activities involving the 22 supply or use of workers in connection with agricultural work, the gathering of wild 23 creatures and wild plants, the harvesting of fish from fish farms, and certain processing 24 and packaging; and for connected purposes.’ www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/11/ 25 introduction (accessed 11 May 2011). 6 The Chester City Coroner Records can be viewed online at www.nationalarchives.gov. 26 uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=017-chec_2&cid=5–10#5–10 (accessed 30 March 2010). 27 7 This is also the Welsh name for the River Dee. 28 29 30 References 31 Anon. (1989) ‘Saltney Marsh’, in B.D. Clark (ed.), Saltney and Saltney Ferry: A Second 32 Illustrated History. Saltney: Saltney Local History Group. 33 Armour, G. (1956) The Trade of Chester and the State of the Dee Navigation 1600–1800. 34 Unpublished PhD thesis, University College London. 35 Augé, M. (2004) Oblivion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 36 Bachelard, G. (1994) The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. 37 Butler, C. (2008) ‘Cockle pickers can return to Dee Esturay [sic]’, Daily Post, 1 Septem- 38 ber, www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2008/09/01/cockle-­ ­pickers-can-­ 39 return-to-­dee-esturay-55578–21645247/­ (accessed 20 May 2011). Christie, I. (2001) ‘I Know Where I’m Going’, The Criterion Collection, www.criterion. 40 com/current/posts/95-i-know-where-­ ­im-going (accessed 20 May 2011). 41 Conrad, P. (1992) ‘Prospero at Play’, Observer, 11 October, www.powell-­pressburger. 42 org/Reviews/Micky/Prospero.html (accessed 20 May 2011). 43 De Quincey, T. (1994) Confessions of an English Opium Eater. London: Wordsworth 44 Classics. 45

273_07_Liminal Landscapes.indd 116 24/1/12 13:29:07 The Sands of Dee 117 1 Dobinson, C. (2000) Fields of Deception: Britain’s Bombing Decoys of World War II. 2 London: Methuen. 3 Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. 4 Harmondsworth: Penguin. 5 Herson, J. (1996) ‘Canals, Railways and the Demise of the Port of Chester’, in P. Car- rington (ed.), ‘Where Deva Spreads Her Wizard Stream’ – Trade and the Port of 6 Chester. Chester: Chester City Council. 7 hooks, B. (1990) Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End 8 Press. 9 Ingold, T. (2007) Lines: A Brief History. London: Routledge. 10 Ingold, T. and J.L. Vergunst (2008) ‘Introduction’, in T. Ingold and J.L. Vergunst (eds), 11 Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Farnham: Ashgate. 12 Jarman, D. (1992) Modern Nature: the Journals of Derek Jarman. London: Vintage. 13 Mason, D.J.P. (1987) ‘Chester: the Canabae Legionis’, in Britannia, 18: 143–68. 14 Owen, H.W. (1994) The Place Names of East Flintshire. Cardiff: University of Wales 15 Press. 16 Perrin, J. (2001) The River Map. Ceredigion: Gomer. Pritchard, T.W. (2002) A History of the Old Parish of Hawarden. Wrexham: Bridge 17 Books. 18 Thacker, A.T. and C.P. Lewis (eds), J.S. Barrow, J.D. Herson, A.H. Lawes, P.J. Riden 19 and M.V.J. Seaborne. (2005) ‘Economic infrastructure and institutions: Roads and road 20 transport’, A History of the County of Chester: Volume 5 Part 2: The City of Chester: 21 Culture, Buildings, Institutions: 73–83. British History Online. www.british-history.ac.­ 22 uk/report.aspx?compid=57309 (accessed 28 February 2010). 23 Smith, P. (2010) Mythogeography: a Guide to Walking Sideways. Axminster: Triarchy 24 Press. 25 Wainwright, M. (2010) ‘Cockling on the Dee’, Guardian, 15 July, www.guardian.co.uk/ 26 environment/2010/jul/15/cockling-dee­ (accessed 09 October 2010). 27 Williams, G. (2008) ‘Morfa’, in Blood, etc. Cardigan: Parthian. Young, J.A. (1926) The Physical and Historical Geography of the Dee Estuary. Unpub- 28 lished MA thesis, University of Liverpool. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

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